Jaeger Machine Company

At a glance

Overview

The Jaeger Machine Company was a Columbus maker of concrete mixers and construction machinery, founded in 1906 by Gebhard Jaeger, a German-born machine designer who had come to Columbus in 1902. His small tilting-drum mixer put concrete within reach of the small contractor, and after the 1913 flood the company rebuilt west of the Ohio Penitentiary, where it claimed to build 44 percent of the mixers made in the United States. Jaeger patented a truck mixer in 1931, added hoists, pumps and air compressors, and put up an Art Deco office in 1936 that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Decline came after a management change in 1968, the company closed in 1992, and its factory land is now part of the Columbus Crew stadium site.

The name

Jaeger means "hunter" in German, and it was already an old Columbus name when Gebhard arrived. Jaeger Street in German Village is named for Christian Jaeger, an Austrian army officer who came west on the National Road and owned more than 50 acres of what is now German Village. Historian Ed Lentz says Gebhard was not closely related to him. Atlases were not always sure of the spelling either: a 1920 Columbus atlas labeled the Dublin Avenue works "Yaeger (sic) Machine Co."

Stories

From fence machines to concrete

Gebhard Jaeger was born in 1874 and reached St. Louis in 1892, just before the panic of 1893. He married Paulina Miller in 1897, and in 1900 the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where he designed woven-wire fence machines for the Union Steel Company. In 1902 he chose Columbus, and concrete. His first design there was a concrete-block machine, which worked but could only ever make blocks. What a contractor really needed, he reasoned, was a machine that could make small batches of concrete on the job site.

A mixer for the small contractor

The Columbus Metropolitan Library says Jaeger designed his first concrete mixing machine in 1905 and founded the Jaeger Machine Company in 1906. Lentz writes that beginning in 1906 with $12,000 in capital in a machine shop on West Broad Street, Jaeger produced the first reliably successful portable concrete mixer. The National Register form describes the invention as a tilting drum type of portable mixer. The company first appears in the 1906 Columbus city directory, with Gebhard Jaeger as vice president and manager, W. H. Peters as secretary and no president listed; Jaeger later became president. The start is not settled: a library photo note says the company began in 1910 on West Rich Street, and the company profile filed with the National Register form dates its growth from 1910, with $12,000 worth of business in small tilting mixers made in a one-room machine shop.

The flood and the move to Dublin Avenue

An engraving published by the Pen and Pencil Club in 1915 shows the Jaeger works at 217 West Rich Street. The 1913 flood had virtually destroyed the factory near the Rich Street bridge, and after it was condemned the company moved west of the Ohio Penitentiary, between West Spring Street and Dublin Road. The new works took over an existing building: a 1910 atlas shows the plant north of Dublin Avenue as "Automobile Works," with frame houses and stables between it and the street. By 1920 the same building was marked as Jaeger's, with two small frame sheds added, and a 1919 engraving gives the address as 518 Dublin Avenue. The 1917 trade catalog lists the company at Dublin Avenue and Hocking Street.

What the catalogs sold

The 1917 catalog page offers "Jaeger" Portable Mixers (Patented) for concrete, mortar and plaster, the "Jaeger" Placing Plant, paving mixers and grouting outfits. Its No. 56-L mixer took 5 to 6 cubic feet a batch in a drum 34 inches across, ran on all-steel trucks and was driven by a 3-horsepower "Jaeger engine". The placing plant, a mixer with power loader, hoist, incline track and spouts, came in three sizes weighing 5,400, 6,500 and 7,000 pounds, and every mixer carried a one-year guarantee on defective parts, replaced free f.o.b. Columbus. By the 1920 catalog the line was concrete mixers, pavers and placing plants. Another catalog of the period, No. 29, boasted of the largest concrete mixer factory in the world and said Jaeger sold about as many mixers as all other makers together.

A Jaeger with a Hercules heart

Gas engines sold under the Jaeger name were Hercules hit-and-miss engines from Evansville, Indiana, painted blue with gold lettering and pinstriping and a Hercules decal. A surviving No. 4L mixer's data plate, a reader told Gas Engine Magazine, lists patents from January 29, 1907, to June 12, 1923. In 1927 the factory built 10 one-third-scale working models of its 3-1/2 L-ST mixer, run by electric motors, for trade shows, fairs and dealers.

"The largest manufacturer of concrete mixers in the world"

The National Register form quotes an article of 1909 that boasted Jaeger was the largest maker of concrete mixers in the world, building 44 percent of the American industry's machines at the Dublin Avenue plant, while Jaeger plants in Europe built 66 percent of the mixers used on the continent. The clipping filed with the form, headed "Jaeger Concrete Mixers Go Around the World," also speaks of the Lakewood plant purchased by Jaeger a year ago, a purchase the form itself dates to 1928. It estimated that over 75,000 Jaeger mixers were in operation and that more than 100 distributors let Jaeger advertise "two hour service" to almost any point in the United States. Jaeger's line then ran from small 3-1/2-cubic-foot trailer mixers one man could move to 56-cubic-foot outfits, in eight other sizes and scores of types. With the Cleveland plant added, total employment was above 600, exclusive of salesmen.

Lakewood of Cleveland

The firm bought the Lakewood Engineering Company of Cleveland, the largest manufacturer of road-building machinery in the world, in 1928 by the National Register's account and in 1929 by Lentz's. The same profile quoted O. G. Mandt, vice president and general manager, as saying Jaeger was embarked on a large production program for truck mixers at both its Columbus and Cleveland plants. The Lakewood name lived on in the Jaeger-Lakewood towers and placing equipment of the 1941 catalog, built in heights from 30 to 500 feet.

Two Columbus men and the truck mixer

The Portland Cement Association says that in 1916 Stephen Stepanian of Columbus developed a self-discharging motorized transit mixer, regarded as the forerunner of the modern ready-mix truck. Stepanian filed for a patent in 1916 and was rejected; he refiled on December 21, 1928, and received U.S. Patent 1,935,922 for a concrete mixing and transporting vehicle on November 21, 1933, with a share assigned to William H. Hoagland and Harold J. Kaufman. Gebhard Jaeger had filed sooner: his application for a "truck concrete mixer," assigned to the company, was filed March 24, 1928, and granted as U.S. Patent 1,801,162 on April 14, 1931. It described a mixing drum on an ordinary gasoline truck, turned one way by the truck's engine to mix and the other way to discharge, with no need to raise or lower the drum. Two more Jaeger truck-mixer patents, 1,861,416 and 1,867,838, followed in 1932. The company profile also said Jaeger had acquired ownership of the oldest and basic patents on truck mixers.

Jaeger trucks in Britain

Scientific Controlled Concrete of Staines, which started in 1934, used American-designed Jaeger truckmixers supplied by Ransomes and Rapier of Ipswich. A Glasgow firm went into business as Jaeger System Concrete Ltd, and in 1936 Balfour Beatty's Express Supply Concrete opened two London plants served by 30 Jaeger truckmixers. In 1937 Trent Gravels of Attenborough, near Nottingham, opened talks with Jaeger Truck Mixers (England) Ltd, sole licensees for the Jaeger truckmixers built by Ransomes and Rapier, and its Jaeger dry-batching plant came into operation in 1939.

Hoists, pumps and compressors

By 1941 Jaeger sold hoists from 6 to 100 horsepower, with one, two or three drums and gasoline, diesel or electric drive, and its catalog claimed that within two years of a redesign Jaeger hoists had come to lead the world. The new hoists replaced the old cone clutches with expanding friction clutches that needed only 4 to 10 pounds of pressure, "so light to the touch that a boy could operate them," and swapped babbitt bearings for anti-friction bearings and cast iron frames for steel. The same catalog put stocks for sales, service and rentals in more than 120 cities in the United States, Canada and abroad. A 1957 catalog of "Sure Prime" dewatering pumps offered sizes from 1-1/2 to 10 inches, pumping 5,400 to 240,000 gallons an hour, and listed the company's products as air compressors, concrete mixers, truck mixers, paving spreaders and finishers. The National Construction Equipment Museum's collection includes a 1956 Jaeger 75-B portable air compressor, the kind used since the 1920s to run jackhammers on road work.

An office built by its own crews

The 1930s were the firm's most prosperous period, probably because public works programs used a lot of concrete. In 1936 it put up a two-story concrete office, 150 by 170 feet, set back about 70 feet from West Spring Street behind a curving drive and lawn. It was designed by the company president, O. G. Mandt, and an engineer, Lyon Gardner, and built by company crews. Because of the slope, it is one story at the front and two at the back, with offices above and garage and storage below. The lower floor is poured concrete and the upper part concrete block, under a coat of stucco. Steel casement windows, spare geometric ornament and plain walls owe an obvious debt to the industrial Art Deco of the 1930s, and above the entrance canopy metal letters spell out the company's name. Inside, a large central room is lit by two sawtooth skylights facing north, ringed by offices. The nominator called it a symbol, a message to the public that the Jaeger company was prosperous and successful. A second production building east of the office along Spring Street dates from 1937, according to company officials. The old automobile works north of Dublin Avenue kept growing: by 1937 it had frame and masonry additions to the north and west and a brick-faced frame addition toward Dublin Avenue, and Sanborn maps updated to about 1954 show further additions of frame, fireproof iron and concrete block on three sides. By 1981, the nominator wrote, no part of that building's outer walls had been an outer wall in 1937, and its steel, glass and brick Dublin Avenue front was built after that year.

Eight presidents in eight years

By 1981 the National Register form recorded that the Jaeger family was no longer involved, and that a change of management in 1968 was followed by eight presidents in as many years. In 1978 the company was close to bankruptcy, a condition blamed on an attempt to diversify into sophisticated electronic equipment, bad management and an eroding share of the construction machinery market. A January 1981 article said Jaeger was struggling to make a comeback in the construction machinery business. By then the office building's owner was Business Telephone Systems, Inc. The building was listed on the National Register on June 16, 1983.

The end

The library's biography of Gebhard Jaeger says the firm remained open from 1906 to 1992, and Lentz writes that it continued in various forms until 1992. A library photo note says the company slipped into insolvency and bankruptcy before being liquidated in 1988, citing the Columbus Dispatch of October 29, 1992. Gebhard Jaeger did not see the decline: he died September 11, 1959, and he is buried in Amaranth Abbey in Union Cemetery.

From foundry ground to a soccer stadium

Jaeger also ran a foundry on the site, and Lentz said the factories there did "nasty, dirty dangerous business," which kept the land cheap enough for the city to put its municipal light plant just to the west. The land cleared out only after the smaller factories declined and Jaeger closed in 1992. When Ohio voters approved casinos in 2009, the ballot language named parcels on Nationwide Boulevard, at the confluence, for the Columbus casino; after opposition led by Dispatch publisher John Wolfe, Hollywood Casino opened on the West Side in 2012. In 2014 Nationwide Realty Investors owned about 25 vacant acres north of Nationwide Boulevard, "the former site of the Jaeger Machine Co." In 2019 the Crew's new owners planned a $230 million, 20,000-seat stadium on a 33-acre site downtown, and Lentz wrote that much of the Jaeger factory site was part of that land. The stadium opened in July 2021 in Astor Park; it is now ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, with 20,808 seats. The office building was photographed standing in March 2012.

People

• Gebhard Jaeger (1874-1959): founder, from Germany by way of St. Louis and Pittsburgh; came to Columbus in 1902 and held the 1931 truck-mixer patent.
• Paulina Miller Jaeger: married Gebhard in 1897.
• W. H. Peters: secretary in the 1906 city directory.
• O. G. Mandt: vice president and general manager in the company profile, later president and co-designer of the 1936 office.
• Lyon Gardner: engineer and co-designer of the office building.
• Andrew Thomas: former company president, interviewed for the National Register form on October 27, 1981.
• Stephen Stepanian: Columbus inventor of the 1916 transit mixer, patented in 1933.

Myths and the record

• "Jaeger invented the concrete mixer." The library says he designed the first concrete mixing machine in 1905 and the National Register form calls the mixer his invention, but Lentz claims more narrowly that he built the first reliably successful portable mixer.
• "Jaeger invented the cement truck." The Portland Cement Association credits Stepanian's 1916 machine; Jaeger's own truck-mixer patent was filed in 1928 and granted in 1931.
• "Stepanian patented the truck mixer in 1916." He applied in 1916 and was rejected; his patent was granted in 1933.
• "Jaeger Street is named for the mixer family." It is named for Christian Jaeger, who was not closely related.
• "The Jaeger engine was made by Jaeger." It was a Hercules engine from Evansville, Indiana.

Timeline

• 1874: Gebhard Jaeger is born on June 19. (source)
• 1892: Jaeger arrives in St. Louis. (source)
• 1900: He moves to Pittsburgh to design fence machines for the Union Steel Company. (source)
• 1902: Jaeger settles in Columbus and designs a concrete-block machine. (source)
• 1905: He designs his first concrete mixer. (source)
• 1906: The Jaeger Machine Company appears in the Columbus city directory. (source)
• 1913: The flood wrecks the factory near the Rich Street bridge, and the company builds a new factory near Dublin Road. (source)
• 1917: The trade catalog lists the works at Dublin Avenue and Hocking Street. (source)
• 1927: Ten one-third-scale demonstration mixers are built. (source)
• 1928: Jaeger files for a truck-mixer patent on March 24. (source)
• 1928: Jaeger buys the Lakewood Engineering Company of Cleveland (Lentz gives 1929). (source)
• 1931: U.S. Patent 1,801,162 for Jaeger's truck concrete mixer is granted on April 14. (source)
• 1933: Stepanian's truck-mixer patent is granted on November 21. (source)
• 1936: The office building on West Spring Street is built. (source)
• 1936: In Britain, Express Supply Concrete opens with 30 Jaeger truckmixers. (source)
• 1941: The hoist catalog lists sales, service and rental stocks in more than 120 cities. (source)
• 1957: A catalog gives the address as 600 West Spring Street, with a Canadian company at St. Thomas, Ontario. (source)
• 1959: Gebhard Jaeger dies on September 11. (source)
• 1968: A change of management begins eight presidents in eight years. (source)
• 1978: The company is close to bankruptcy. (source)
• 1983: The office building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 16. (source)
• 1992: The Jaeger Machine Company closes. (source)
• 2014: Nationwide Realty Investors holds about 25 vacant acres on the former Jaeger site. (source)
• 2021: The Columbus Crew's new stadium opens in July in Astor Park. (source)

Sources

• catalog.archives.gov: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Jaeger Machine Company Office Building (1981)
• dispatch.com: Ed Lentz, As It Were: Jaeger's future cast in concrete (2019)
• digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org: Gebhard Jaeger (1930 portrait and biography)
• digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org: Jaeger Machine Company building photograph (2012)
• digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org: Jaeger Machine Company building engraving (1915)
• digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org: Jaeger Machine Company building engraving (1919)
• vintagemachinery.org: Jaeger Machine Co. history
• archive.org: Jaeger Machine Company catalog page (1917)
• archive.org: Jaeger Machine Company, manufacturers of concrete mixers (1920)
• archive.org: Jaeger heavy duty construction mixers, catalog No. 29
• archive.org: Jaeger hoists and towers, catalog H-41 (1941)
• archive.org: Jaeger dewatering pumps (1957)
• patents.google.com: US 1,801,162, truck concrete mixer (1931)
• patents.google.com: US 1,935,922, concrete mixing and transporting vehicle (1933)
• patents.google.com: Gebhard Jaeger patents before 1930
• web.archive.org: Portland Cement Association, ready-mixed concrete (2013 copy)
• agg-net.com: The dawn of the ready-mixed concrete industry
• farmcollector.com: Working scale model demonstrates Jaeger concrete mixer (2020)
• gasenginemagazine.com: Jaeger cement mixer engine (1990)
• hcea.net: Historical Construction Equipment Association, Jaeger
• wosu.org: There's a long history to the site of Columbus Crew's proposed stadium (2019)
• columbusceo.com: Columbus taking bids for former power-plant site in Arena District (2014)
• mlssoccer.com: Columbus Crew president, new stadium won't open until summer 2021 (2019)
• columbuscrew.com: stadium